Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
A Hunter’s Bag near a Tree Stump with a Magpie, Known as ‘The Contemplative Magpie’
Also titled Jachtbuit bij een ekster op een boomstronk, bekend als ‘De filosoferende ekster’
Melchior d'Hondecoeter (Utrecht, 1636–1695)
c. 1678
- Medium
- canvas, oil paint (paint)
- Classification
- painting
- Dimensions
- height 215 cm x width 134 cm
- Museum
- Rijksmuseum
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
About this work
Commissioned by King William III of Orange, d’Hondecoeter painted these two hunting still lifes for Soestdijk Palace. They hung facing one another in a corridor whereby the magpie in this painting ‘speaks’ to the peacock in the other one. Together they depict a fable in which the birds must choose a king. The magpie objects to the peacock. With its splendid plumage how can it effectively defend its fellow birds in times of peril?
